Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Learning To Love God

This is something I shared with my Community Gathering group last night, and several people asked me to email them what I said, and after a little thought I decided to make it a blog post. We were discussing our call as disciples of Christ to love God, each other and ourselves. Jesus called it the greatest commandment, and we were discussing which one of the three is most difficult for us to do.Most of us thought that loving God was the easiest of the three, but as we continued our discussion we discovered that while the concept of loving God is easy, the concrete practice of it is a little more difficult. Since God isn’t corporeal, we can’t show Him affection by hugging him. We can tell Him we love Him, but sometimes it just sounds so hollow.What I said on the subject was this.When this clicked for me was when I heard a teaching on it, and I apologize for not remembering the teacher who showed this to me.The basic idea is this. God is looking for us to answer three basic questions.

Will you pursue me?

Will you spend time with me?

Am I a priority in your life?

Remarkably, these are the same ways our wives want to be shown love. We have to understand that God is genderless. He is neither male nor female, yet He is perfectly male and perfectly female. He needed both genders to fully express himself. When it comes to showing God we love Him, we can see the model in our wives. He wants to be cherished, and pursued. He wants you to lavish attention on Him, but most of all, He wants to be not just a priority in your life, but THE priority in your life.I didn’t share this with my group out of any pretense I get it right, because I get this wrong constantly, both with God and with my wife. It’s so easy once we are five, or seven, or fifteen years into the relationship to slip into maintenance mode and let other passions take over in our hearts.I am happy that some people thought what I said was helpful, and it is my hope you will find it helpful for you as well.How would you have answered the question? How do you concretely and in real time show your love for God?